This invention is concerned with apparatus for lasting toe, side and heel seat portions of a shoe.
Proposals have been made in the past for a combined apparatus for lasting toe, side and heel seat portions of a shoe (see e.g. U.S. patent specification No. 3359386), but in general it has been customary to provide three separate machines for effecting such operations, although in the more recent past the combination of side and heel seat lasting in a single machine has become widespread (see e.g U.S. patent specification No. 4395790), while proposals have been made for combining toe and side lasting operations (see e.g. U.S. patent specification No. 4407033).
In many instances, however, it is preferable to utilize individual machines, thereby giving greater flexibility in the manufacture of shoes; for example, where the various operations are carried out using more than one machine, the breakdown of one of those machines will not entirely prevent the continued production of shoes, whereas in a single machine combining all the functions into one, the breakdown of any component part of the machine is likely to hold up production entirely.
At the same time, however, there is an increasingly recognized need to reduce the amount of labor involved in the manufacture of shoes and to this end operators are being required more and more to operate more than one machine, where a combination of machines is seen to be appropriate in terms of operating cycle times and the operator time required for loading and unloading each individual machine. One of the main problems in this regard, however, is that of setting up each machine according to the particular shoe to be operated upon, since where the operator has to make adjustments to two machines a significant loss of production is thereby created.